'Endless Curls' Barbie is displayed at the Mattel booth last month at the American International Toy Fair in New York. / Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Detroit Free Press Style Writer

The Lammily Doll is supposed to be a more realistic-looking Barbie-type doll. / Nickolay Lamm

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Poor Barbie.

The iconic fashion doll — known for her tiny waist, abundant breasts, permanently pointed toes and at least 130 careers including astronaut, teacher, doctor, presidential candidate, and most recently, Sports Illustrated swimsuit model — is in the midst of yet another Barbie beat-down.

Two groups are hounding the Girl Scouts to stop awarding its Barbie-themed Be Anything, Do Anything patch. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood says the toy is a sexualized stereotype and promotes an unattainable body image.

The Center for a New American Dream is also opposed to the Barbie badge. The group says the doll is a symbol of hyper consumerism, pointing to her excessive wardrobe and her plastic pink refrigerator, which houses a built-in frozen yogurt maker. My Barbie would have wanted one and I wouldn’t mind having one myself.

Meanwhile, researchers at Oregon State University recently issued a study showing that girls who played with Barbie think they have fewer career options than girls who played with Mrs. Potato Head, who doesn’t even have her own identity. Without Mr. Potato Head, she wouldn’t exist. She’s just a Mrs.

All this while Barbie’s sales trend down worldwide. They dropped 13% over the holiday season and were down a total of 6% for 2013. In 2012, Barbie sales were down 4% for the holiday season and a total of 3% that year.

Is Barbie, who after all is just a doll, on the verge of becoming a relic of the past? Is this backlash the one that will kill Barbie? Or is it just time for her to retire?

“I don’t know why people hate Barbie so much. I’m just endlessly amazed that she still has the capacity to stir up feelings,” says M. G. Lord, a journalist and faculty member at the University of Southern California who authored “Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll.”

Barbie, who debuted in 1959 and turned 55 on March 9, “was a revolutionary toy,” Lord says. Before that “dolls had primarily been baby dolls that taught young girls how to nurture.”

In addition to being ultra glamorous and having an adult figure, Barbie broke gender barriers; she was an astronaut in 1965, 18 years before Sally Ride became the first American woman to rocket into space — giving girls something to aspire to besides motherhood.

“She’s a role model in my eyes for little girls,” says Lisa Lackie, a 55-year-old Barbie collector from Fraser. “I allowed my daughter to play with Barbie … she’s a manager at Comerica bank. She’s moved up.”

Still, in an effort to combat some of Barbie’s influences, artist Nickolay Lamm plans to start production on a crowd-funded Barbie-type doll, the Lammily, with a figure he says is more realistic than Barbie’s.

“It’s time for a doll which looks like a typical woman so that girls have a fun doll to play with, which also promotes realistic beauty standards,” Lamm told me recently in an e-mail conversation.

And clearly he’s not alone in his belief. According to his website, www.lammily.com, Lamm had raised $455,730 at last look and still has several days left to go. His goal was $95,000.

“Just because we are aware that something isn’t real, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t influence us,” Lamm says about Barbie. “The ads you see on TV of glamorous looking people — that’s a result of lighting, designers, making sure everything looks just right.”

Barbie never made me, a chubby kid, feel bad. Here’s what’s did: My second grade teacher put each of us on the classroom scale, and shouted our weights aloud. My classmates knew exactly how much more than everyone else I weighed — and were happy to remind me about it.

I never wanted to look like my Barbie, though I did hope one day I might have a spacious pink Dreamhouse of my own, a cool convertible to park in its garage and an exciting job.

Meanwhile, the Lammily’s body isn’t any more realistic than Barbie’s. The average American woman wears a size 14. It’s pretty clear that the bikini-clad Lammily does not.

Which is fine with me — dolls are toys — and, I’m pretty sure it’s fine with Barbie, too. Barbie is about inclusion. She is about respecting choices other women make, whether it’s being a model or a president.

“Today, truly anything is possible for a girl,” Barbie said in a prepared statement, released through toymaker Mattel, in response to her Sports Illustrated appearance. “Let us place no limitations on her dreams, and that includes being girly if she likes.”

Women and girls shouldn’t compromise who they are in an effort to please others. No one — not consumer advocates, feminists or mom — should force their values or prejudices on other women.